Gaming Performance Comparison

Recommended System Requirements

Game

Core i9-9900K 8-Core 3.6GHz

Ryzen 5 2600

In terms of overall gaming performance, the Intel Core i9-9900K 8-Core 3.6GHz is massively better than the AMD Ryzen 5 2600 when it comes to running the latest games. This also means it will be less likely to bottleneck more powerful GPUs, allowing them to achieve more of their gaming performance potential.

The Core i9-9900K 8-Core was released less than a year after the Ryzen 5 2600, and so they are likely to have similar levels of support, and similarly optimized performance when running the latest games.

Both CPUs exhibit very powerful performance, so it probably isn't worth upgrading from one to the other, as both are capable of running even the most demanding games at the highest settings (assuming they are accompanied by equivalently powerful GPUs).

The Core i9-9900K 8-Core has 2 more cores than the Ryzen 5 2600. 8 cores is probably excessive if you mean to just run the latest games, as games are not yet able to harness this many cores. The cores in the Ryzen 5 2600 is more than enough for gaming purposes. However, if you intend on running a server with the Core i9-9900K 8-Core, it would seem to be a decent choice.

The Core i9-9900K 8-Core has 4 more threads than the Ryzen 5 2600. Both the Core i9-9900K 8-Core and the Ryzen 5 2600 use hyperthreading. The Core i9-9900K 8-Core has 2 logical threads per physical core and the Ryzen 5 2600 has 2.

Multiple threads are useful for improving the performance of multi-threaded applications. Additional cores and their accompanying thread will always be beneficial for multi-threaded applications. Hyperthreading will be beneficial for applications optimized for it, but it may slow others down. For games, the number of threads is largely irrelevant, as long as you have at least 2 cores (preferably 4), and hyperthreading can sometimes even hit performance.

More important for gaming than the number of cores and threads is the clock rate. Problematically, unless the two CPUs are from the same family, this can only serve as a general guide and nothing like an exact comparison, because the clock cycles per instruction (CPI) will vary so much.

The Core i9-9900K 8-Core and Ryzen 5 2600 are not from the same family of CPUs, so their clock speeds are by no means directly comparable. Bear in mind, then, that while the Core i9-9900K 8-Core has a 0.2 GHz faster frequency, this is not always an indicator that it will be superior in performance, despite frequency being crucial when trying to avoid GPU bottlenecking. As such, we need to look elsewhere for more reliable comparisons.

Aside from the clock rate, the next-most important CPU features for PC game performance are L2 and L3 cache size. Faster than RAM, the more cache available, the more data that can be stored for lightning-fast retrieval. L1 Cache is not usually an issue anymore for gaming, with most high-end CPUs eking out about the same L1 performance, and L2 is more important than L3 - but L3 is still important if you want to reach the highest levels of performance. Bear in mind that although it is better to have a larger cache, the larger it is, the higher the latency, so a balance has to be struck.

The Ryzen 5 2600 has a 1024 KB bigger L2 cache than the Core i9-9900K 8-Core, and the two CPUs have the same L3 cache size, so the Ryzen 5 2600 wins out in this area with its larger L2 cache.

The maximum Thermal Design Power is the power in Watts that the CPU will consume in the worst case scenario. The lithography is the semiconductor manufacturing technology being used to create the CPU - the smaller this is, the more transistors that can be fit into the CPU, and the closer the connections. For both the lithography and the TDP, it is the lower the better, because a lower number means a lower amount of power is necessary to run the CPU, and consequently a lower amount of heat is produced.

The Ryzen 5 2600 has a 30 Watt lower Maximum TDP than the Core i9-9900K 8-Core, and was created with a 2 nm smaller manufacturing technology. What this means is the Ryzen 5 2600 will consume significantly less power and consequently produce less heat, enabling more prolonged computational tasks with fewer adverse effects. This will lower your yearly electricity bill significantly, as well as prevent you from having to invest in extra cooling mechanisms (unless you overclock).

CPU Graphics

CPU Package and Version Specifications

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Gaming Performance Value

Performance Value

CPU Mini Review

Mini Review

The Core i9-9900K 8-Core 3.6GHz is a top-end CPU based on a refinement of the 14nm++ Coffee Lake microarchitecture.
It offers 8 physical cores (16 logical), initially clocked at 3.6GHz, which may go up to 4.7GHz using 8 cores with Turbo Boost, or up to 5.0GHz boost clock on a single or dual core. The i9-9900K has 16MB of L3 Cache.
Among its many features, HyperThreading, Turbo Boost 2.0 and Virtualization are activated and the processor has its multiplier unlocked.
This Core i9-9900K CPU offers the fastest gaming performance of any Intel CPU as of 2018, and will not be the bottleneck in any modern gaming PC. It will be able to play all modern games comfortably on ultra graphics performance at any supported resolution without being a hindrance to the accompanying GPU.

The Ryzen 5 2600 is a mid to high-range CPU based on AMD's 12nm Zen+ microarchitecture. It offers 6 physical cores (12 logical), initially clocked at 3.4GHz, which may go up to 3.8GHz using Turbo Boost.
It has an unlocked multiplier, therefore, it can be overclocked using traditional methods.
It has 16MB of L3 Cache. Level 3 cache is a static memory bank of a processor and it is used to feed it instructions. This processor also supports DDR4 based RAMs with maximum memory support of 64GB.
It has a maximum Thermal Power Design of 65W. It is on par with competitor processors.
Among its many features, Simultaneous Multithreading, Cool n Quiet, CoolCore Technology, Extended Frequency Range (XFX), Pure Power and Precision Boost are enabled.
It features an integrated AMD Radeon Vega GPU with 11 Compute Units that offers low-end graphical performance.
This CPU is likely to offer excellent computational performance and will not be the bottleneck in any modern gaming PC.